Vincent T. Bugliosi, Jr. (/ˌbuːliˈoʊsi/; born August 18, 1934)[1] is an American attorney and New York Times bestselling author. During his eight years in the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, he successfully prosecuted 105 out of 106 felony jury trials, which included 21 murder convictions without a single loss. He is best known for prosecuting Charles Manson and other defendants accused of the seven Tate-LaBianca murders of August 9–10, 1969. Although Manson did not physically participate in the murders at Sharon Tate's home, Bugliosi used circumstantial evidence to show that he had orchestrated the killings.

Since leaving the LA district attorney's office in 1972, Bugliosi turned to private practice and represented three criminal defendants, achieving successful acquittals on behalf of all three. The most famous of which was Jennifer Jenkins, whom he defended for the murder of Eleanor "Muff" Graham which occurred on the South Pacific island of Palmyra. The case was the subject of his 1991 #1 New York Times bestselling book And the Sea Will Tell. He has turned down opportunities to represent famous defendants Jeffrey MacDonald and Dan White because he does not represent anyone whom he believes to be guilty of murder.[2]

Bugliosi, who is of Italian ancestry, was born in Hibbing, Minnesota. Bugliosi is a graduate of the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, which he attended on a tennis scholarship. In 1964, he received his law degree from UCLA, where he was president of his graduating class.

He has two children: Wendy and Vince Jr. He often refers to his wife, Gail, in his books, referencing her understanding and patience with him. He has also stated that he is an agnostic, although open to the ideas of deism.[3]

In 1972, Bugliosi ran as a Democrat for Los Angeles County District Attorney against longtime incumbent Joseph Busch. Joseph Gellman was his legal counsel for this campaign. Bugliosi narrowly lost the campaign. Bugliosi ran again in 1976, after Busch died of a heart attack in 1975, but lost to interim District Attorney John Van de Kamp.

Bugliosi wrote a bestselling book, Outrage, on the acquittal of O.J. Simpson for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman. Bugliosi argues Simpson's guilt, and criticizes the work of the district attorney, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and Judge Lance Ito. He criticized the media for characterizing Simpson's lawyers as the Dream Team, arguing the lawyers were unremarkable and of average ability. He uses these profiles to illustrate broader problems in American criminal justice, the media, and the political appointment of judges.

Bugliosi is severely critical of prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden. Bugliosi argued that a major mistake was the District Attorney assigning Clark and Darden to prosecute it. This was because Bugliosi considered the two average prosecutors, who lacked the competence and skill to try a significant murder case, much less Simpson. Bugliosi pointed out glaring mistakes made by the prosecution. He faults prosecutors for not introducing the note Simpson had written before trying to flee. Bugliosi writes that the note "reeked" of guilt and that the jury should have been allowed to see it. He also points out that there was a change of clothing, a large amount of cash, a passport, and a disguise kit found in the Bronco, of which the jury was never informed. Bugliosi also takes Clark and Darden to task for not allowing the jury to hear the tape of Simpson's statement to police about cutting his finger the night of the murders.

Bugliosi writes that the prosecutors should have gone into more detail about Simpson's abuse of his wife. He writes that it should have been made clear to the mostly African-American jury that Simpson had little impact in the black community and had done nothing to help blacks less fortunate than he. Bugliosi points out that, although the prosecutors knew that Simpson's race had nothing to do with the murders, once the defense "opened the door" by trying to paint Simpson falsely as a "leader" in the black community, the evidence to the contrary should have been presented to prevent the jury from allowing it to bias their verdict.

In several books, Bugliosi has written that, when preparing a case for trial, he starts with his final summation. In this book, he stated that, if he had been prosecuting the case, he would have put at least 500 hours of preparation into his final summation, and that it was obvious that Clark and Darden had waited until the night before to prepare for it.

Bugliosi writes at length about the allegations that LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman had planted a bloody glove in order to frame Simpson. He argues that in order for Fuhrman to do this, there would have had to have been a vast conspiracy between Fuhrman and the other officers who worked the case. Bugliosi points out that it was highly improbable that Fuhrman or anyone else involved in the case would have tried to frame Simpson, as California law at the time provided that anyone who planted evidence in a death penalty case could have faced the death penalty themselves.

Bugliosi criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Clinton v. Jones. He wrote the book No Island of Sanity, in which he argues that the right of a president to be unburdened by a private lawsuit outweighed Paula Jones's interest in having her case brought to trial immediately.[5]

In 1986, Bugliosi played the part of prosecutor in an unscripted 21-hour mock television trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. His legal opponent, representing Oswald, was the well-known attorney Gerry Spence. The program, sponsored by London Weekend Television, required extensive preparations by Bugliosi and inspired him to later write a comprehensive book on the subject of the assassination. His 1,612-page book (with a CD-ROM containing an additional 958 pages of endnotes and 170 pages of source notes), Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, was published in May 2007. His book examined the JFK assassination in detail and drew on a variety of sources; his findings were in line with those of the Warren Report, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of the 35th President. He called Reclaiming History his "magnum opus."[6]

The title of Reclaiming History derived from Bugliosi's belief that the history of the Kennedy assassination has been hijacked by conspiracy theories, the popularity of which, he asserts, has a pernicious and ongoing effect on American thought:

"Unless this fraud is finally exposed, the word believe will be forgotten by future generations and John F. Kennedy will have unquestionably become the victim of a conspiracy. Belief will have become unchallenged fact, and the faith of the American people in their institutions further eroded. If that is allowed to happen, Lee Harvey Oswald, a man who hated his country and everything for which it stands, will have triumphed even beyond his intent on that fateful day in November."

Bugliosi does not own a computer and at one time did all his research through library microfilm archives.[6] More recently, he has relied on his virtual secretary, Rosemary Newton, to help with these tasks.[6] He also writes his books entirely by hand; Newton later transcribes his long-hand texts.[6]